The Sisters Are Alright, Second Edition by Tamara Winfrey Harris

Author:Tamara Winfrey Harris [Harris, Tamara Winfrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781523093885
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2021-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

Swallowing Anger, Losing Respect

Tracy Elba,* thirty-nine, was a producer with a postgraduate degree and a shelf full of awards when she got called up to the TV news big leagues—a job in a top-three market. Even with more than a decade of experience under her belt, she was unprepared for what she encountered. Newsrooms are notoriously high pressure and fast paced, but this …

“It was seriously dysfunctional,” Tracy says. “People screamed, slammed things, got in each other’s faces and cussed at each other. I say cussed not cursed. It was hostile. Granted, it’s easy to feel slammed in that kind of environment. But out of the four newsrooms where I’ve worked, this was the worst place. You had to be tough to survive and willing to take a whole lot of shit.”15

She entered her new gig a superstar. The ratings on her show were great. By chance, she caught breaking news on her cell phone one afternoon and saw her footage lead the evening news. The station’s president and general manager seemed to love her and stopped by her desk each day to say hello. But, she says, too much public praise made her a target in the competitive environment. She found herself on the wrong side of a powerful executive producer.

“He buried me with assignments, then enumerated mistakes in my unfinished work and sent them to higher ups. He yelled at me and demeaned me—treated me horribly. I was the only Black person on his team, and I felt like I had no allies.

“I didn’t go to HR. That’s the thing that I didn’t do. I wanted to be strong. I thought I could power through it. I thought I could solve the problem by using my smartness, my niceness, and my contacts. I thought I could get ahead of it.”

And she didn’t want to be an angry Black woman. Tracy admits that many of her colleagues went toe-to-toe with senior producers—bumping heads in the newsroom and sharing drinks later. But she didn’t feel that path was open to her. And it seems she was right.

“One day, after a show, he cursed me out in front of everyone—a whole row of producers. It got so bad that another producer was begging him to stop. I had had it. I raised my voice: ‘You will NOT talk to me like this. I know you’re my boss. But you’ll never, ever talk to me like this in front of everyone ever again.’

“He slammed his hand on the desk and walked away. I got in trouble for yelling at him—disrespecting my supervisor. From there on out, every time anyone would yell at me, I would just take it. People had said, ‘When he does that, you just have to give it back to him.’ A Black woman can’t do that and expect for the results to still be positive.”

Tracy insists she’s not a crier, “but that newsroom would send me home crying every day.” Her hair began falling out and her milk dried up, keeping her from nursing her six-month-old baby.

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